One of the bizarre things about the United States Senate is that it is the only legislative body in which the minority can exert its will over the majority—unless the majority has 60 votes. A loophole in Senate rules allows a “filibuster” to prevent legislation from moving forward—thus preventing an “up-or-down” vote which would normally require a simple majority for success.
The word filibuster tends to recall scenes from the classic movie, “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington,” in which James Stewart speaks for nearly 24 hours straight and ties up Senate business in an effort to expose corruption within the government.
The filibuster tactic, however, has not always been used for the common good—in the waning days of segregation, Senators blocked civil rights legislation for many years by standing up and simply talking—talking about anything, anything at all until they got tired and passed the football to someone else, who would then continue the filibuster. When either the people filibustering or the people proposing the “controversial” legislation backed down, Senate continued to business per usual.
Since this took time, effort and political capital to do, it was only on serious issues that the filibuster would take place. But that was in the old days. Now, because of the “procedural filibuster,” the minority party essentially needs to just say “We’re filibustering,” and they can make it so that any legislation requires 60, not 50, votes to be passed.
That puts it simply. If Nevada Senator Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats wanted to make a big issue out of it, they could force the Republicans to stand up and read from the phone book for days on end, but the political risks for both the Democrats and the Republicans are so big that neither side wants to go “nuclear.” The chances of mutually assured destruction are too high.
So instead the majority party has to compromise, which causes their legislation to be watered down. Ineffective tax cuts were put into Obama’s stimulus bill to woo three Republican Senators: Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and, yes, Arlen Specter.
If the stimulus bill had contained more stimulus and less of the same sort of ineffective tax cuts that economists agree do not actually stimulate the economy, it would have been far more effective—but would not have passed without the help of the three GOP senators who brought the Democrats’ vote total over 50. This is just one example of how the minority party can still hold power even in an environment that is so anti-Republican that it is remarkable to behold.
Normally I support the filibuster. It, in the past, has been used responsibly. The Democrats, even though they were in the minority for nearly six years of the Bush Presidency, used it tactfully. Even the Republicans under Bill Clinton didn’t abuse the power of the filibuster. But since the 2006 midterm elections and especially since Obama’s inauguration in January, the use of the filibuster has grown exponentially.
Senator Specter’s defection from the Republican Party is not really going to change much. He has supported Obama with a lot of major legislation already—including the $787 billion stimulus package.
He’ll continue to support the President and moderate-liberal policies, as he has during the majority of his career in the Senate. This tells us less about filibusters and more about where the Democrats and Republicans stand in today’s political world.
The Republicans used to be the “big tent” party. Now, that party is the Democrats, the party that has been slowly increasing their power by acting in a bipartisan fashion and investing in the center, a place where ideology is less important than getting good ideas from both sides.
The Republicans, on the other hand have a lot to learn from Specter’s defection, and here’s why: Now that Arlen Specter—someone who had supported the Bush tax cuts, the Bush Iraq War and opposed gay marriage—has realized that his fate lies within the Democratic Party and not the Republican Party, it means that the Republican Party is shrinking so much that there is no more room for moderates. And when you look at the news today, the people from the right that are commenting on this are—you guessed it—Rush Limbaugh, Michael Steele and other far-right loonies.
I finally understand why the people at the Tea Parties were so angry. The ship is sinking, and the far-right has nowhere else to go. If the dismantling of the Republican Party continues this way, it will only be a matter of time before someone is going to have to create a new party.
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